I travel quite a bit for work, and have recently decided that the hotel loyalty thing – always staying at the same chain, and collecting loyalty points – wasn’t doing anything for me. I wasn’t using the room nights, and don’t seem to get any perks.

But everywhere I go, I see cool weird hotels that I think wish I had stayed at.

So I’ve started actively seeking out these weird hotels, rather than the usual Marriott or Hilton. I’ve ben eyeing Hôtel Mozart, in Brussels, for years, and this time decided to stay there.

It was quite an experience. It appears it was build by a drunk architect, with winding stairs going in all directions, not-square corners in all the rooms, strange acloves everywhere, positively stuffed with art. All of the walls are elaborate moroccan tiles. There was a fountain outside my room, just because. The doors are all gorgeously carved.

The guy who owns it used to live in California, and moved to Brussels years ago to run this hotel. There are photos in the lobby showing his extensive world travels.

My room was tiny, but that’s fine. I mostly view a hotel as a place to sleep, rather than as a destination. But the door to my bathroom was also elaborately carved, and had stained glass windows!

It’s maybe a minute walk from Grand Place, maybe 3 minutes from Centraal (the train station), and surrounded by all manner of great restaurants – Greek, Korean, Indian, Peruvian, and so on, not to mention a zillion chocolate shops, bars, souveneir stores, and so on.

The staff was attentive and friendly, the beds clean and comfortable, and the (Free!) breakfast every morning delightful.

I will definitely be staying here again.

More photos on Flickr, including full-sized versions of all of these ones.

I spent yesterday and today building two little side-workbenches for my drill press and my band saw, in order to free up the main workbench for … y’know … actual work space. I have a new project to start tomorrow – or possibly next week – and it will be less frustrating trying to find a square inch to work in. At least until I clutter it up with something else.

I’ve started reading Clockwork Angels, by Kevin J. Anderson, based on the story by Neil Peart that became the album Clockwork Angels. The album already makes a *little* more sense, and I’m only in the second chapter. I wonder if they expected people to just get it, or if they really expected the True Fans to read the book. I guess I’ll know more in a few days.

I finished My Effin’ Life. It’s deeply personal. I can’t imagine sharing that much with the whole world.

The thing that struck me the most is the meaning behind certain songs that were always a little insecure. In particular, Slipping now had a whole other layer beyond the obvious. Beautiful and also heartbreaking.

Meant to tell you
Tell you from the start
Meant to show you
What’s inside this shallow heart
But I could not find the words
Worthy enough to say

I slipped along the way

I hope we hear more music from Geddy, but even if we don’t, he and his pals have created a wealth of beauty and shared it with the world.

I was kind of surprised to read in “My Effin Life” that Geddy considers clockwork Angels their best work. Although it is now 12 years old, I really have never listened to it and when I do I don’t get it. If I had to pick their *best* work I’d say Snakes and Arrows.

Historically, when Rush came out with a new album I would initially dislike it and then over the course of a few months would come to love it. But there’s really no songs on this album that I particularly like or even know.

So I’m going to try to spend the next few months listening to this and see if it catches me.

I’m reading Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.

It was mentioned almost in passing by Geddy Lee in his autobiography, My Effin’ Life. I imagine Alex and Neil reading paragraphs to one another as they went on their long bus rides from one concert to another. For his part, Geddy did not enjoy the books but acknowledged their role. Lyrical inspiration for Neil over the years.

I’ve mentioned before that some of the best things that I’ve read I’ve discovered through their mention in other books. This is usually Stephen King’s fault.

The writing is very Dickensian with long rambling descriptive paragraphs about mundane things.

Everyone that I’ve talked to about it who has actually read it says that it is just slow and plodding. So if you’re not a Dickens fan, you may not enjoy it, but I’m finding the prose to be poetic and descriptive, even while it is dark and ghastly.

I also discovered this morning that not only is there a TV series, but there’s also a final book that was released many years after the author died. (Titus Awakes, 2013)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the word “consensus” as it is used in open source, and how it relates to the notion of *voting* on decisions.

While the English word consensus has a number of nuances, it usually means “everyone more or less agrees”. The nuance usually comes up between *most* of the community vs complete solidarity and agreement on a decision. It doesn’t usually mean complete unquestioning agreement, but it means that everyone can live with the outcome.

A vote, on the other hand, draws a bright line between YES and NO, and, one might argue, creates two camps, with winners and losers, which is pretty objectively a worse outcome than everyone agreeing. As a result, many open source communities shy away from a vote, because it is divisive – in the strictest sense of the word – ie, that it divides a group into two subgroups.

There’s a lot of tension and nuance here, though. In open source, we value diversity of opinion because it creates new ideas that you don’t get when everyone is in complete agreement. So in one sense, you want to cultivate, and encourage, disagreement. But you also, eventually, need to make a decision when those disagreements are intractable, and you can’t say yes to both options.

Furthermore, insisting on universal agreement forces some people to pretend to agree, in order to get along, or because there is pressure to achieve this artificial consensus. Voting allows people to express their dissent, yet still move on for the good of the entire community.

This is especially true when it comes to non-technical decisions, where there is not a clear, verifiable, testable, correct answer. And, frequently with non-technical decisions, reverting that “patch” later on is difficult, expensive, or even impossible.

Take, for example, naming a project. There is no right answer. (There may be some obviously wrong answers.) The answer cannot be tested or verified. And once decided, reverting that decision would be expensive, by many measures of expense, both socially, and in terms of work that would need to be done. If community members are deeply invested in their ideas, it may be time for a vote.

As observed in a private conversation earlier today, smart people should see the way the tide is running, and concede early to avoid deepening dissention. But, at the same time, people who see their position as objectively correct (hyperbolically, good vs evil), rather than merely being an arbitrary opinion (hyperbolically, red vs yellow) have an obligation to advocate for that position. This can be hard to disambiguate, when various people disagree about which category the disagreement falls into.

You should not vote “too soon”, nor should you vote “too late”. Too soon would mean don’t vote while there seems to be progress towards consensus. Too late looks like when there is no progress, and everyone is simply reiterating their arguments. MUCH too late would look like when the discussion starts to become angry or personal – that’s a clear indication that you’ve waited too long.

Another critical aspect is that once the vote has taken place, those who were not on the “winning” side must be willing to accept that this is, in fact, the desire of most of the community, and then move on, for the good of the community. Your dissent is noted. Your idea was considered. But another idea “won”, and it’s time to accept that and move on. This is exceptionally hard, but it is an indication that you’ve put the good of the community over your own personal victory. Accepting defeat is sometimes the most community-centric thing that you can do.

Skippy published a post a couple of weeks ago about the history of his blog.

It’s a fantastic overview of the history of blogging. I was particularly fascinated by the history of Habari that he linked to. Lots of details that I had forgotten, including a post by me, calling out Matt for his misuse of the term meritocracy to refer to his BDFL model of governing WordPress.  While I remember the debate, I didn’t remember directly challenging Matt’s leadership style. Or that I ever looked that young.

[Attempting to document my thoughts about the insanity of the second Trump presidency, since I sincerely hope that my grandkids will not believe any of this ever happened.]

Florida Man, and Stable Genius Donald Trump has made some weird cabinet appointments this week, from the man he mocked mercilessly as “Lil’ Marco” and said he wouldn’t trust to run one of his smaller companies (Secretary of State), to dog-killer Kristi Noem as head of Homeland Security.

This one, however, while expected, may be the most insane yet.

I know a lot of people worship Elon Musk for his … well, I honestly don’t know for what. I guess, like with Trump, they believe the lie that he’s a good businessman – presumably because – like Trump – he bought a lot of businesses with Daddy’s money, and then largely let them run on their own while taking credit for them. The one business that he actually actively participated in – Twitter – is now worth about 20% of what it was worth when he took over, but, still, somehow, people think that he’s doing a job there. I guess it makes sense why Trump likes him. They’re practically the same person.

Trump seems to think that Musk’s genius is … firing people. So, Trump played a role on a TV show where he got to fire people, and here’s someone who does it IN REAL LIFE! That is quite the resumé, right?